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Cockle mystery investigated
Rebecca Gladstone-Gallagher will check on the cockles over three years.
A three-year study into why the cockles in Whangateau Harbour aren’t growing to adulthood starts this month.
The cockles were decimated in 2009 when extreme tides exposed the seabed to the midday sun. More than half of cockles at monitoring sites perished, including 80 per cent of large (over 30mm) cockles.
The population has failed to recover despite a Ministry of Primary Industries ban on taking cockles, which has been in place for 11 years.
Data collected by marine biologist Dr Karen Tricklebank, and her team of student citizen scientists, has consistently shown that, while numbers of juvenile cockles have returned, they are not maturing.